Perhaps We Should Reconsider The Missile Defense Cuts...

by Michael Ramirez
from Investor's Business Daily

Obama: The Irrational President - A Wary Encounter

from The Spectator.co.uk
by Melanie Phillips

In remarks made after his meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Obama said:

I suggested to the Prime Minister that he has an historic opportunity to get a serious movement on this issue during his tenure. That means that all the parties involved have to take seriously obligations that they have previously agreed to. Those obligations were outlined in the road map...

But the first obligation in the Road Map was laid upon the Palestinians -- to dismantle their infrastructure of terror. It was their failure to meet that first obligation, without which the rest of the Road Map could not be implemented, which led to its collapse as a strategy. Yet Obama appears to think that the only obligations which must be met are those which apply to Israel, with the Palestinians apparently getting a free pass.

This is of course all of a piece with his belief that Israel is the cause of the Middle East impasse which would be solved by the creation of a state of Palestine. The fact that even now Fatah states explicitly that it won’t accept the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, let alone Hamas repeatedly restating its intention to destroy Israel and kill every Jew, is not, in Obama’s mind, the real obstacle to a solution. Not only does Obama not see the creation of ‘Hamastan’ in the West Bank as an obstacle -- he sees instead the refusal to treat Hamas as part of the solution as an obstacle. Accordingly, he presents as the obstacle not the people continuing to wage war but the country that is the victim of that war – which he blames for not agreeing to destroy its own security.

The irrationality and injustice of this is manifest on every level. But what cannot be stressed enough is the way both Obama and the ‘progressive’ legions behind him have made as their rallying cry support for a proposed racist and religiously exclusionary state that denies civil rights for all. Those screaming ‘apartheid’ at Israel are demanding the establishment of a putative Palestine state which would allow no Jews to live there, let alone enjoy the equal civil and human rights afforded to Arab citizens of Israel. As the former CIA Director James Woolsey is reported to have observed earlier this month:

...the world has a tendency to ‘define deviancy down for non-Jews.’ As a result, governments around the world, including the Obama administration, never even mention the possibility that Jews should be able to enjoy the same rights and privileges in any future Palestinian polity that Israeli Arabs exercise today in the Jewish state.

So, instead of what amounts to a Hitlerian program of Judenrein in any prospective Palestinian state - meaning, as a practical matter, if not a de jure one, that no Jews can reside or work there, there could be approximately twice the number of Israeli Jews as currently reside in so-called ‘settlements’ on the West Bank. They should be free to build synagogues and Jewish schools. And newspapers that serve the Jewish population in any future state of ‘Palestine’
should be permitted to flourish there.

Jews should also have a chance to elect representatives to a future Palestinian legislature. They should be able to expect to have representation as well in other governing institutions, like the executive and judicial branches. In order for the foregoing to operate, Jews in the Palestinian state must be able to live without fearing every day for their lives. In Mr. Woolsey`s view, ‘Once Palestinians are behaving that way, they deserve a state.’

On all these essential preconditions for a solution that pass the basic test of civilised values, Obama is silent. Quite apart from the injustice of his approach to the Middle East impasse and the irrationality of linking it with the Iran crisis, his policy of ‘engagement’ with Iran is hardly making him popular in the Arab world. He agreed with Netanyahu that there was a new and more promising mood in the Arab world. But he seems unable to grasp that what’s behind that new mood is terror of Iran getting the bomb – and despair at the way the US is resorting to the policy of appeasement. Accordingly, Obama is actually squandering the opportunity to enlist those Arab states in the fight against a common enemy of Iran. As John Hannah writes in the Washington Post:

Notably, the administration’s approach is increasingly at odds with that of U.S. allies in the Middle East that seek to maximize pressure on Tehran. For the past month, Egypt has mounted a courageous public effort to rally America’s Arab friends in opposition to an Iranian campaign of subversion that stretches from Iraq to Morocco. Instead of rushing to the defense of distressed allies, Obama has largely remained silent, instead opting to reiterate his interest in reaching some sort of accommodation with Tehran, the source of the region’s problems.

This was amplified by this telling exchange at the press conference after his talks with Netanyahu:

Q : Thank you, Mr. President. Aren’t you concerned that your outstretched hand has been interpreted by extremists, especially Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, Meshal, as weakness? And since my colleague already asked about the deadline, if engagement fails, what then, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it’s not clear to me why my outstretched hand would be interpreted as weakness.

Q: Qatar, an example.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’m sorry?

Q: The example of Qatar. They would have preferred to be on your side and then moved to the extremists, to Iran.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Oh, I think -- yes, I’m not sure about that interpretation.

On the face of it, the evidence that has emerged from this meeting between Obama and Netanyahu could not be more stark -- as David Horowitz observes -- that the Obama administration is set upon a strategy that would effectively throw Israel to the Islamist wolves. The worst fears of Israel’s government and friends appear to have been amply confirmed.

And yet and yet; notwithstanding all this, sanity might eventually still prevail. A small hope indeed – but it may just happen.

Consider. The fact that Obama is making this lethally false linkage between creating a state of Palestine and tackling the problem of Iran should not blind us to the fact that the overriding issue is indeed not Palestine but Iran. That is the issue which will define Obama’s presidency. The great question is whether Obama has concluded that, when push comes to shove, America will have no option but to ‘live with’ a nuclear Iran. My understanding is that, while there are those in his administration for whom the answer is ‘yes’, there are others for whom the answer is ‘no’. In his post-meeting remarks, Obama himself acknowledged the danger a nuclear Iran poses not just to Israel but to America and the whole of the Middle East. Certainly, he thinks ‘engagement’ can defuse that danger. But what will he do when it becomes apparent that it will not?

Obama has already demonstrated that, when brought up sharply against the suicidal consequences of his naivety, he can shift his position. We saw this in recent days by his twin retreats from publishing more pictures of ‘enhanced interrogation’ in Iraq and from his previous opposition to military tribunals for al Qaeda suspects. He has stated that if Iran hasn’t unclenched its fist by – variously – the autumn/end of the year he will introduce ‘tough sanctions’. This is not altogether reassuring, both in the vagueness of the timetable, the weakness of any sanctions regime and the fact that he is still giving Iran the greatest gift of all – time -- to progress towards its nuclear goal. But it may just be that he really does think in his liberal hubris that making nice with Iran will draw the poison – and when he realises it has not done so, he may not be too keen on becoming the President that allowed Iran to go nuclear on his watch.

A further point about Obama is this. He is a man of the left. The left is not merely Manichean, but insulates itself from any possibility of heresy by surrounding itself only by those with whom it agrees. It is therefore rarely forced to follow through its reasoning and thus see its patent falsehoods and idiocies exposed. From his history and past associations, it’s a fair bet that Obama has thus never had his assumptions properly challenged by exposure to rationality and evidence. In recent years, Israel has been led by politicians who were either incapable, for various reasons, of properly articulating that rationality or themselves subscribed to many of the false premises of post-modern, post-moral, ahistorical thinking that characterises ‘progressive’ opinion in the west. Netanyahu breaks that mould. By simply talking to him, Obama may have heard for the first time an argument that is intellectually capable of puncturing at least one or two of his illusions.

We have no way of knowing whether any of that took place; or, if it did, whether it had any significant effect at all. No-one should take too much notice of the public show of relaxation and relative harmony with which this meeting was subsequently spun. Nor should we believe the counter-spin that Netanyahu returned to Israel a grimmer and wiser man. He knew the score about Obama well before he set out on this trip; and he would indeed be a fool if he were not therefore playing a carefully thought-through diplomatic and strategic game. Let’s hope he is; because if ideologue Obama does indeed turn out to stifle pragmatic Obama over the issue of Iran, Israel really will be on its own.
Click to read the rest of the article and the comments

Netanyahu to the White House: "What the hell do they want from me?"

from Jihad Watch
May 29, 2009

"The official said that the basis of the Obama White House's resolve is the conviction that it is in the United States' as well as Israel's interest to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Does it not ever occur to anyone in the Obama White House that however much it might be in the interests of the United States and Israel to "end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," it may not be within the power of the United States or Israel to "end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"? The Obama White House seems to be unshakably committed to the proposition that the Palestinians are just passive reactors to Israeli aggression, and that peace will come as soon as the Israelis decide to get on with it.

The Obama White House does not ever seem to consider the proposition that the Palestinians might fight on until they achieve the total destruction of Israel, and that the jihad doctrine of Islamic supremacism mandates that they pursue no other course.

Quotes from "Netanyahu: 'What the hell do they want from me?,'" from Foreign Policy, May 28
Click to read the article and the comments

Abbas expects Obama pressure to push out Netanyahu

from The Jerusalem Post
By JPOST.COM STAFF
May 29, 2009

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not resume negotiations with Israel unless the Netanyahu government agrees to a complete settlement freeze and publicly accepts a two-state solution, Abbas has told the Washington Post in an interview.

And since he does not believe Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will lift his opposition on these issues, Abbas and his leadership expect American pressure to gradually force Netanyahu out of office, the paper reported on Friday. "It will take a couple of years," it quoted one of Abbas's officials as saying.

Abbas was interviewed the day before his Thursday meeting at the White House with President Barack Obama.

Setting out what the newspaper called "a hardline position," the Palestinian leader conditioned a resumption of talks with Israel on Netanyahu's agreement to a halt in all settlement building - a demand being repeatedly stressed by Obama, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior US officials - and formal Israeli government acceptance of Palestinian statehood.

Abbas added that he would not even assist Obama's special envoy, George Mitchell, in trying to encourage Arab states to begin warming relations with Israel until Israel accepted these conditions. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognizes the two-state solution," Abbas was quoted saying. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."

However, the Washington Post went on, "Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze - if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while US pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. 'It will take a couple of years,' one official breezily predicted."

Abbas, the article continued, "rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession - such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees."

The upshot, wrote Diehl, is that "in the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian."

The Palestinians, under Bush, knew that "until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel," wrote Diehl.
Click to read the rest of the article and the comments

All the worries about Obama and Israel are about to become true...

from The Lid
Friday, May 29, 2009

Obama's Call To Stop Settlements - Its Different This Time, MUCH DIFFERENT

In her press conference on Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told journalists that the Obama administration "wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions."

On Thursday, President Obama stood with the "Moderate" Terrorist Leader Mahmoud Abbas calling for Israel to stop all settlement building including "Natural Growth." As I have pointed out many times before, both President Bush and Secretary of State Rice have made similar statements over the past eight years. After talking to some of my contacts within Israel and those with intimate knowledge of what is happening within Israel, the reports are not good. This time it is different.

When Bush demanded that Israel stop all settlement activity, there was always a wink, wink at the end of it. The Bush administration would never protest too loudly as long as it was "natural growth." Meaning contiguous adding on to existing settlements was OK. So if someone's child got married, they could live in the same area as their parents...etc. My sources tell me that there is no "wink, wink." Obama wants Israel to stop all settlement building PERIOD.

As Gary Ackerman (D-L.I.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, told Stewart Ain of the NY Jewish Week:

“Internal [natrual] growth is not an obstacle — it is life,There is no moral equivalence between settlements and terrorist activity,” he said by phone shortly after leaving a 90-minute meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv.

“Bibi mentioned settlements,” Ackerman continued, using Netanyahu’s nickname. “He pointed out that unlike previous administrations that said they would not build them but built them, he is not building new settlements. But he has a position that you cannot stop people on the issue of internal growth.”

Ackerman said he subscribed to the position of a Kadima Knesset member, Otniel Schneller, who was quoted as saying: “I will not lend a hand to a dictate preventing my daughters from giving birth to my grandchildren.”

Sources say that Senator George Mitchell Obama's Mideast envoy and national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones -- see the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, home to some almost 300,000 people, as a key obstacle to getting a peace settlement. Of course this ignores the fact that the Palestinians including President Abbas still reject recognizing Israel as a Jewish State and that President Abbas is the leader of Fatah, who's Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade is still committing terrorist attacks within Israel. Even if he wanted to make peace (which he doesn't) Abbas does not have the legitimacy from his own people to sign an agreement. If he did there would have been an agreement with Prime Minister Olmert, who some sources offered Abbas an agreement that was even more favorable than the one Yassir Arafat was criticized for turning down.

Here's the real problem for the Jewish State, in past when Israel has faced problems with a sitting President they have taken their appeal to Congress. But this congress is not likely to go to bat for Israel for two reasons, President Obama is very popular and they are not likely to fight him on this issue especially when you consider that research and anecdotal evidence show the Democratic Party voter is no longer pro-Israel.

So Israel is left with a White House that will continue to pressure her toward one-sided concessions and a Congress that doesn't have the political chops to stand up to the President.

The question is will Netanyahu stand up to Obama? That is still unknown. On one hand the composition of his coalition will demand that he does, but on the other hand one of the major reasons he was voted out of office in 1999 was his poor relationship with Bill Clinton. In fact, Bill Clinton sent James Carville to Israel to help Ehud Barak take the Prime Minister position away from Netanyahu.

Where all this will lead is unknown. What Is known is the era of "good feelings" between an Israel Prime Minister and a US President is ending. And all the worries that many of us had about Obama and the Jewish State, are about to become true.
Click to read the article and the comments

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL - Courtesy of Barack Obama

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
from DickMorris.com
May 24, 2009
image by rees

From Caroline Glick, deputy editor and op-ed writer for the Jerusalem Post, comes alarming news. An expert on Arab-Israeli relations with excellent sources deep inside Netanyahu's government, she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta, who recently took time out from his day job (feuding with Nancy Pelosi) to travel to Israel "read the riot act" to the government warning against an attack on Iran.

More ominously, Glick reports (likely from sources high up in the Israeli government) that the Obama administration has all but accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons. She writes, "...we have learned that the [Obama] administration has made its peace with Iran's nuclear aspirations. Senior administration officials acknowledge as much in off-record briefings. It is true, they say, that Iran may exploit its future talks with the US to run down the clock before they test a nuclear weapon. But, they add, if that happens, the US will simply have to live with a nuclear-armed mullocracy."

She goes on to write that the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing that "as far as the [Obama] administration is concerned, if Israel could just leave Iran's nuclear installations alone, Iran would behave itself." She notes that American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel's doing, not Iran's.

In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map if Iran acquires the bomb.

Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks aimed at stopping its progress toward nuclear weapons is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments." By warning only of possible strengthening of economic sanctions if the talks do not progress, Obama is making an empty threat. The sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act as it must if it is to deter Iranian nuclear weapons.

All this means is that Israel's life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death. Nor can one deter a theocracy bent on meriting admission to heaven and its virgins by one glorious act of violence. Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone.

Those sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that we, as Jews, are witnessing the possible end of Israel. We are in the same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country. If we remain complacent, we will have the same anguish at watching the destruction of Israel that our forebears had in witnessing the Holocaust.

Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton.

Obama may have held the first White House cedar, but he's not planning to spend next year in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu rejects Obama's call to fly UN flag over Western Wall

from Israel National News
May 24, 2009
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
IsraelNN.com
H/T: Jihad Watch

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem Thursday night that the Israeli flag will continue to fly over the Western Wall (Kotel). The first prime minister in years to appear at the venerable yeshiva on Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day), he ignored U.S. President Barack Obama’s apparent trial balloon that he wants to see the United Nations flag fly over the Old City holy sites.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said the president put forward the proposal during his visit to the White House last month.

Prime Minister Netanyahu declared, "The flag that flies over the Kotel is the Israeli flag... Our holy places, the Temple Mount -- will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.”...

Between 1949 and 1967, the religious sites in the City, as well as all of Judea and Samaria, had been under the control of Jordan, which forbid entry of Jews to the Western Wall (Kotel) and other holy places, as well as barring Christians from churches. Israel immediately opened all holy sites to all religions after the entire city was re-united in 1967, returning the Old City to Israeli sovereignty after nearly 2,000 years.

In his short but enthusiastic speech at the yeshiva, where an Arab terrorist slaughtered eight young students slightly more than a year ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu repeated his “Undivided Jerusalem” message.

The packed study hall of the yeshiva interrupted Prime Minister Netanyahu’s short speech several times with applause. The first clap of hands was in response to the statement that Israel’s capital “never will be divided again.” Jerusalem Day marks the day in the Six Day War upon which the Israel Defense Forces liberated the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem from Jordanian rule.

In an attempt to appeal to the national-religious community after years of neglect from a prime minister, Netanyahu said, “It is important for me to stay in warm communication with you. The connection with Jerusalem unites all sectors of the people, secular and religious, as one."
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had kept a very close relation with Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav when he was mayor of Jerusalem and attended annual Jerusalem Day ceremonies there, but he became more distant from religious institutions after he followed former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to his new Kadima party.

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s vow on Jerusalem was made in the presence of Israel’s two chief rabbis, Likud Knesset Member and former IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon, and Jewish Home party chairman MK Rabbi Daniel Hershkowitz.

It was the second time during the day he promised to keep the city united, having stated earlier in the day that “Jerusalem was always ours, will always be ours, and will never again be divided.” His speech was delivered at Ammunition Hill in memory of soldiers who fell in the Six-Day War in 1967.
Click to read the article and the comments

Netanyahu: "Jerusalem will never again be partitioned and divided"

from Joshua Pundit
May 21, 2009

Today is יום ירושלים‎, Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day in Israel.

It's a national holiday commemorating the reunification of David's City by the IDF during the Six Day War.

It's odd to reflect that it only happened by chance. The Israeli government had appealed to Jordan's King Hussein, who had illegally occupied the eastern part of the city in 1948 to stay out of the fighting.

Had he done so, Jerusalem would not have been reunited on that day. Instead Hussein listened to Egypt's dictator Gamel Abdul Nasser, who told him that the Israeli Air Force had been destroyed and that Egyptian troops were marching on Tel Aviv. Not wanting to miss out on the jihad against the Jews and the anticipated plunder, Hussein treacherously sent Jordan's Arab Legion into battle - where they were decisively defeated.

The battle for Jerusalem took place on Ammunition Hill, where the Jordanians had a military base. The Israelis didn't want to bomb it because of the risk of civilian casualties, so they stormed it with ground troops belonging to the Israeli 3rd company of the 66th Battalion, paratrooper's brigade. The battle took about 4 1/2 hours over rugged terrain, and 37 Israeli soldiers were killed in the battle in one of the bloodier battles of the war. Ten of the soldiers who fought at Ammunition Hill were given citations, and the site is a national memorial today.

It's also the site where the traditional Jerusalem Day Ceremony is held.

Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, just back from Washington had a few things to say to mark the event:

"Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided," Netanyahu said at the official state ceremony marking Jerusalem Day and the reunification of the capital during the Six Day War 42 years ago.

"Only under Israeli sovereignty will united Jerusalem ensure the freedom of religion and freedom of access for the three religions to the holy places," he added.

As I mentioned yesterday, I think the rumors about Obama Administration officials promising half of Jerusalem to the Palestinians are a case of the Arabs hearing what they want to.

While President Obama might like the ideas, he's at least intelligent enough to understand that there's no way Netanyahu would agree to it, nor would the members of his coalition...or the Israeli public. it's a red line, and trying to force Israel to yield it up would pretty much be the end of any kind of harmonious relationship between the Obama administration and Israel, and end any leverage Obama might have on Netanyahu.Even Shimon Peres wouldn't acquiese to it - although Tzipi Livni probably would, in a heartbeat.

The only way Obama could get Israel to give up Jerusalem would be to use US troops to try and conquer it, and while an attempt to do that is not totally out of the realm of possibility with this president and his pro-Arab appointees, I don't see it happening.

Why are the Jews so unwilling to let the Arabs have any control over Jerusalem? Maybe because they've seen how that works in the past.

After the Jordanians took over the Eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948, they killed or drove out every Jew who lived there - which is how it became, in that phrase so beloved by al-Reuters, the AP and the BBC, 'traditionally Arab East Jerusalem'.Many of th e'Palestinians who claim they've 'lived in Jerusalem for generations' are squatters who appropriated Jewish homes after the residents were killed or exiled.

The Jordanians demolished half of the Old City's fifty-eight synagogues, and the historic Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was plundered for its tombstones, which were used as paving stones and building materials. Some of the synogogues were turned into public latrines. The area around the Western Wall, Judaism's most sacred site, was turned into a public dump.

Since Arafat took over, the Palestinians have made a point of defiling or destroying any Jewish Holy sites that are in the areas of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West bank) that they occupy, like the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron or Joseph's tomb.

And, oh yes..that was just another of those pesky Oslo requirements Arafat agreed to and never even bothered to look like he was fulfilling.

Any other country but Israel would have driven him and his friends over the borders an ddispoosed of th eproblem once and for all. As a matter of fact, a lot of Arab countries like Jordan, Kuwait and Iraq did just that.

No, the Israelis are going to be hanging on to Jerusalem. It's theirs, no matter how much some of the thieves around them might want to steal it and desecrate it.

Selah.
Click to read the article and the comments